


don't ask me (what your sacrifice was for)

by dridri93



Series: Clone-tober 2020 [1]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Umbara Arc (Star Wars: Clone Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:14:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26752678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dridri93/pseuds/dridri93
Summary: He’d known when he saw the Commander withhiskarking helmet, walking alone into the barracks out of the eternal Umbaran gloom.
Relationships: Boil & CC-2224 | Cody, Boil & Waxer (Star Wars)
Series: Clone-tober 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948393
Comments: 20
Kudos: 75





	don't ask me (what your sacrifice was for)

**Author's Note:**

> First prompt for the Clone-tober prompt sets floating around Tumblr! Today's prompt was _Boil + Bucket_ , and my gremlin angst brain decided to take that and run.

He’d known when he saw the Commander with _his_ karking helmet, walking alone into the barracks out of the eternal Umbaran gloom.

More accurate to say that he’d _known_ when Waxer didn’t find him after his company returned to the capital city in tatters. But the last spark of hope he’d held – that maybe Waxer had to be medevac’d directly to the medics, or got caught up talking logistics with the Commander like he did sometimes – died when he saw Commander Cody cradling Waxer’s helmet like a tubie. Like Waxer had cradled Numa on Ryloth, awkwardly but with so much care.

He pretended not to see the commander across the bunks. He wanted to pretend, just for a few seconds longer.

The room went quiet around him as his company noticed the intrusion and the cargo he carried. In seconds, only Commander Cody’s footsteps echoed through the barracks, plastoid clicking with his steps. Boil thought he heard someone, probably a shiny, gasp.

His company had the sense to make themselves scarce, fading into corners and slipping out of the room in the commander’s wake. By the time Commander Cody reached him, Waxer’s helmet still empty in his hands, the area around Boil was deserted.

As much privacy as his men could give him. Force bless them.

He couldn’t avoid Commander Cody’s approach anymore once he halted, out of arm’s reach but within the bubble of space the men had given them. “Boil,” his commander said, and he’d rarely heard that much grief hiding in the crack of his commander’s voice.

He looked up and met the empty visor of Waxer, of his closest brother. Met the smiling eyes of the little painting of Numa they’d worked on together. _A good luck charm_ , Waxer had called it. _A reminder_ , Boil knew it was. Something outside of this karking war to remember.

 _A promise_ , they’d both avoided saying. War made mockeries of promises, they both knew. Maybe they’d tried to avoid that fate, never saying it outright.

So much for that.

He jerked his eyes away from the painting, swept them up to the Commander’s – to _Cody’s_ face, bare. His own emptiness echoed back at him from his commander’s eyes, the acknowledgement of the sorry duty Cody had taken on.

He couldn’t find any words. He’d never been one to fill silences. That was – had been, _kark_ – Waxer’s habit. He stared into Cody, and the silence stretched. Waxer’s empty visor glared into his chest. If Boil had been a more poetic man, he’d say it was looking for the heart Waxer took with him.

“I’m sorry,” Cody said. Boil saw him hold in a fidget through sheer force of will, the aborted shift in weight.

Boil held in a dozen responses. Too cruel, too pointed, too grief-stricken for what few of his men were left to see. He had to be strong for them, model how to react – “Yeah,” he said, voice low and rough. “Me too.”

Cody moved forward, and when Boil didn’t flinch, set Waxer’s helmet to Boil’s right – where Waxer would always stand, of _course_ – and sat heavily on the bunk, the helmet between them.

Boil stared at the floor, the sense of the helmet – empty, too-light, but _present_ – to his right too intimidating to face. “Was it worth it?” he dared to ask, hoping to whatever gods they were given that it was.

Cody’s silence was answer enough.

Boil wanted to – He didn’t know, but the need for motion swelled in his gut. His hands shook, wanting to grab the empty helmet and hurl it across the barracks, wanting to punch, wanting to grab and hold and shake and ask _why_.

He did none of those things. The person he wanted to ask wasn’t there.

Instead, he stared at the floor, dull grey durasteel tile scuffed by the traffic of hundreds of boots.

The hand pressing light on his unarmored shoulder, stripped to his blacks, made him flinch, startle into the bunk rails at his left. The pressure vanished, but he glanced up anyway. It was expected of him, to check in.

“Boil,” Cody started before trailing off. Boil could watch the questions discarded on Cody’s normally-stoic face – _are you okay_ : of course he wasn’t; _can I do anything_ : not unless he or the Jedi could raise the dead; _do you need anything_ : some karking space and Waxer back. He’d prefer the latter but would take the former in a pinch.

He watched as Cody slowly lifted his hand back to Boil’s shoulder and let it happen this time. The touch burnt cold like ice through his blacks, like the ball of grief and rage in his gut. He managed a nod and a grimaced smile, meaning _I’ll live_ and trying not to show the caveat of _even if he won’t_.

The sorrow in Cody’s eyes said that he maybe saw the second part, too. He lifted his hand and stood, pausing as if to say something else. He finally murmured, just loud enough for Boil to hear, something he’d heard the Kaminoans tell them as trainees – “From water we are born. In fire, we die. Our bodies… will seed the stars.”

Boil bowed his head, refusing to allow himself to sob with Cody still watching him. He tried not to picture Waxer’s body lying broken on some shadowed Umbaran battlefield, limp and lifeless, _abandoned_ because the only things living clones _got_ from the dead were memories. No pyre, no funeral, nothing like the ceremonies he’d watched General Kenobi hold for fallen generals. Just broken bodies near-anonymous in muddied white and, if one was lucky, something solid to remember the dead by.

He heard Cody walk away, steps heavy, armor clicking louder as if to fill the silence that descended. The barracks door whisked shut and Boil was left with an empty room, cavernous, his own stuttering breaths echoing off the walls. No one but him, and beside him, Waxer’s helmet. The only part of his brother he had left. He got lucky, he supposed.

He turned to face the helmet, finally, and found it staring out into the room, Numa’s painting just visible over the curve of the crown of it. He reached out to trace the orange-golden paint that he’d help touch up, just a month ago, and found his hand to be shaking. He tore off his glove and felt the minute ridges in the paint from the brushstrokes, felt the chips and cracks of wear that battle left in the plastoid. He was glad that the fatal wound hadn’t gone through the helmet, in a bitter way.

If he only paid attention to the helmet, he could pretend Waxer had simply forgotten it. That he was coming back.

His fingers slipped to the painting of Numa and his breath hitched. He traced the nubby lekku – by now they’d be longer, hopefully sleeker with health and the food she deserved – and the round cheeks, her bright eyes, her blinding grin.

 _A promise_ – the thought bubbled up unbidden, and he collapsed inevitably forward, hand flat over Numa’s likeness, forehead just touching the crest of Waxer’s helmet. A promise Waxer wouldn’t be able to keep. A promise Boil had made _because_ of Waxer, because he could see the adoration in his brother’s eyes and wanted to keep that light alive. A promise Boil, too, might be made unable to keep.

The image of little, wide-eyed, kind Numa watching the skies for her _nerra_ ’s return lanced through him, bursting the swell of grief in his gut. He shuddered and scooped the helmet to his chest, felt it creak as he clutched it too hard and consciously cradled it securely but gently. Like a tubie. He hiccoughed a sob that felt ripped out of him, pressed his face back to the crown of the helmet in his arms. All he could smell from it was dust, armor-cleaning solvent, and the ozone crackle of blasterfire.

He turned his nose away and pressed his cheek to Numa’s portrait. The tears that he hadn’t noticed drew dirty tracks in the thin layer of dark Umbaran dust covering the plastoid. A keen tore out of his throat, animal-high, and he fell sideways onto the bunk, curled around the helmet like a trooper trying to hold his guts in.

The helmet creaked again in his grip, dusty and too empty. Boil gasped for breath, choking on hot tears, chest hurting worse than a blaster shot, worse than anything. The coil of grief in his gut burned like ice, twisted like a cornered beast, and he curled tighter around the only solid thing he had left of Waxer.

Alone in the cold Umbaran barracks, Boil cradled the bitter broken promise of Numa’s happy grin to his chest, and cried until he couldn’t find any more tears and his eyes burned. Then he slept fitfully, the bunks slowly filling around him, still curled around Waxer’s helmet; the war went on, even if Waxer’s fight was over.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment and/or a kudos if you enjoyed!  
> I've got tomorrow's fic written, and a good start on day 3; let's see if I can keep this buffer up.


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